About Los Angeles
Los Angeles
To boost its growth, Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th Century unabashedly promoted itself to winter weary mid-westerns and easterns as the “Land of Sunshine”, “The Wonder City of the United States” and “The progressive city of the 20th Century.” It worked. Today as the second most populous city in the United States, Los Angeles is home to nearly 4,000,000 residents spanning over 470 square miles with a yearly economic index of over $1 trillion, making it the 3rd largest city economy in the world. And as promoted, it averaging 284 days of sunshine a year.
Known for its entertainment industry, the Los Angeles economy is enormous and diverse that includes manufacturing, financial, fashion tourism and emerging hi- tech as well as the busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere. Los Angeles is also an important center of culture, medicine, energy, agriculture, science, media and international trade.
With more than a third of its residents foreign born, Los Angeles is one of the most diverse cities in the world. Recently California became a minority-majority state in which the majority of Californians is made up from the total of the minority populations. Los Angeles County has the largest number of Mexicans outside of Mexico, and the largest concentration of Hispanic, Asian and Native American of any other county in the country.
The city’s ethnic character is evident in the communities and neighborhoods scattered across the city’s expanse. It has more Iranians, Filipinos, Koreans, Guatemalans, Cambodians and Salvadorans living outside their native countries that anywhere else in the world.
Woody Allen in his 1977 film, Annie Hall, said of Los Angeles that “I don’t want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.” Despite the barbs of shallowness hurled at it as “La La land” that comes in part from its long-standing rivalry with New York, Los Angeles is an important center of culture and higher learning. It’s home to UCLA, part of the highly regarded University of California. Its cross-town rival is University of Southern California (USC), the oldest independent university in the west (1880). Other prestigious private schools include the California Institute of Technology (Caltech); the Clairmont Colleges, Occidental College and Loyola Marymount. The California State University has four campuses in the county including one in Los Angeles. Los Angeles was also instrumental in the creation of the two-year community college that successfully transfers many students to the public universities.
Seasons in Los Angeles are only imperceptibly different from each other and roughly divided into a long summer that starts in earnest after the “June gloom” and ends the hottest temperatures driven by the eastern Santa Ana winds in September and October. Winter and Spring are mild and hopefully rainy because little rain falls outside of November to March. Given its sprawling size, Los Angeles spans several micro-climates, created the Santa Monica Mountains to the north and the coastal marine layers of the southwest. Typically, the San Fernando Valley is much hotter than downtown while the Hollywood Hills and the beach communities including Santa Monica and Venice are relatively cooler.
In the 1930s the New Yorker writer, Dorothy Parker quipped, "Los Angeles is seventy-two suburbs in search of a city.” While most Los Angelenos might take offense, they might also recognize their city’s horizontal vastness. Decades later writer Eve Babitz wryly observed of her hometown that, “Los Angeles isn’t a city. It’s a gigantic, sprawling, ongoing studio. Everything is off the record.” What follows is a very un-encyclopedic list of communities and neighborhoods that make up Los Angeles.
LA Neighborhoods
Downtown/Chinatown
The growth and development experienced in downtown Los Angeles in the last dozen years makes a strong argument against Parker’s dismissal of Los Angeles. Since the 1980s the city has added new sports, arts and entertainment centers that daily draws thousands to Staples Center, The Broad Museum, Disney Concert Hall or the myriad of restaurants and bars that have opened in the last few years. Since 1999, over 37,000 housing units including condominiums, loft and warehouse conversions that has encouraged stores and businesses open to accommodate the needs of thousands of new downtown dwellers along with the thousands of workers and commuters. And with the plans in development to open up public access and ecologically re-imagine its uses, the Los Angeles River will add a vital asset to a thriving and vibrant city.
Hollywood
Hollywood synonymous with the movies is where at the turn of the 20th Century pioneering filmmakers re-located their east coast studios to take advantage of the best source of illumination, year-round sunlight and to avoid the reach of Thomas Edison’s movie patents. Many of its studios – Warner Brothers, Universal and Paramount (which is still there) – were founded there along with others including Chaplin Studios and RKO. Once its own city, Hollywood was incorporated into the city of Los Angeles in 1910. Although recognized throughout the world as the movie capital, Hollywood’s glamour suffered a slow decline that began in the 1980s. With both private and public investments, With the development of new hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, Hollywood is emerging as both an entertainment and tourist destination alongside the addition of thousands of new condominiums and apartments, many a part of mix-use development.
Silver Lake / Echo Park
Given the Los Angeles -New York rivalry it’s not surprising that Los Angelenos scoff at the idea of Silver Lake as the” Brooklyn of Los Angeles.” True both attract the young and the hip, but the comparison basically ends there. Silver Lake is an eclectic and diverse community that in the last decade or so replaced most of its (predominately Hispanic) working-class roots with a vibrant retail and restaurant scene centered around Sunset Junction on Sunset Blvd. It’s home to musicians, celebrities, creatives and professionals drawn to equally eclectic mix of homes - California bungalows and Craftsman to mid-century and contemporary architecture, centered around the Silverlake Reservoir. Pulp fiction writer Raymond Chandler who lived in numerous parts of Los Angeles acidly describes the watery landmark in his 1934 short story, Finger Man as
“the gray silk of a lake dropped away from us and the exhaust of the old Marmon roared between crumbling banks that shed dirt down on the unused sidewalks.” Much has changed since then. This namesake “lake” draws thousands of joggers, cyclists & dogwalkers along its two- and half-mile path and parks.
The Echo Park shares many similarities to the neighboring community of Silver Lake – young, artists and hipsters residents, comparable architectural styles and a plethora of restaurants, stores and coffee spots. Like Silver Lake it’s named after a lake (formerly a reservoir), Still Echo Park has its own distinct character and history. Just west and north of downtown, Echo Park until the 1950s was historically a Hispanic neighborhood, but development expansion dramatically changed the neighborhood by the city’s eminent domain shameless claim of Chavez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium.
Los Feliz / Atwater Village
Los Feliz, one of Los Angeles’ older neighborhoods is located on the eastern side of the Hollywood Hills, just north of Hollywood and next to Griffith Park, the largest municipal park with an urban wilderness in the country, that makes up the original Rancho Los Feliz land concession. The hamlet of Los Feliz is nestled in an area just south of Griffith Park and its adjacent neighbors are Hollywood to the west and Silver Lake to its east. More specifically, its borders are Hollywood Boulevard to the south, Hyperion Avenue to the southeast, Griffith Park to the north, the L.A. River to the east, and Western Avenue to the west. Its terrain ranges from flat in heart of the village to quite hilly on its east and north.
The neighborhood has long been home to movie stars, musicians, and the Hollywood elite - Jon Hamm, Kristen Bell, Flea of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Colin Farrell, James Cameron and Angelina Jolie. It boasts some of the best-known residential architecture in Los Angeles, including two homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright’s first project in Los Angeles, the Ennis House, built by his son, Lloyd using pre-cast concrete “textile block.” Included in the national registry of historic places, it has been in many films and television programs, most notably in the 1982 Blade Runner. Wright’s Hollyhock House is now the site of the eleven-acre public Barnsdall Art Park and Museum. Another architecturally ground breaking house is Richard Neutra's Lovell House. Once described as "a Mondrian painting come to life," the 1929 prefabricated steel caged house ignited Neutra’s world-wide reputation. There are a variety of architectural styles in Los Feliz homes from classic Mediterranean, Spanish Riviera, Norman French and Country English to Mid-Century Modern.
Los Feliz was home to many early film studios. Walt Disney drew his first image of Mickey Mouse in the garage of his uncle's house in Los Feliz and later opened his first animation studio nearby on Kingswell Avenue. D. W. Griffith's ran his production studio on what is, now Laughlin Park an exclusive, gated Los Feliz neighborhood.
Los Feliz’s backyard is Griffith Park with over 53 miles of trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding. This 4,310-acre park is home to the Autry Museum of the American West, the Greek
Theatre, the Los Angeles Zoo and Griffith Observatory. There are two 18-hole and one 9-hole public golf courses; the Los Angeles Equestrian Center that offers boarding and direct access to all of Griffith Park trails; and grassy, open spaces for family picnics and soccer.
Just east of Los Feliz across the Los Angeles River is Atwater Village. The area has undergone gentrification in the last decade with new restaurants and shops along Los Feliz and Glen Feliz Blvds. that cater to the recent arrived young creatives. Change will continue with the re-imagining of the Los Angeles River. Property prices have risen is anticipation of the massive developments that expand the public access to the riverside’s green spaces and parks. Interestingly Atwater has the largest concentration of pre-1939 buildings in LA County.
Leimert Park / Baldwin Hills
Leimert Park is considered the cultural center for African-Americans in Los Angeles. The late filmmaker and Los Angelo, John Singleton of Boyz n the Hood fame called it the “Black Greenwich Village.” It was one of few Southern Californian communities developed for middle and upper-middle class black families featuring Spanish Colonial Revival homes and apartments on tree lined streets. At its heart is Leimert Park, a cultural, music and arts that for decades has served as a vital public space.
Adjacent to Leimert Park is Baldwin Hills, one of the wealthiest Black neighborhoods in the country earning the nickname of the “Black Beverly Hills.” Mid-century modern homes with jet-liner views of downtown and the Hollywood basin dot the neighborhood. It’s home to the Kenneth Hahn Park, a sprawling hillside of coastal native habitat with miles of footpaths and biking trails, picnic areas and a community center that was once outlined with oil rigging. At the northern foot of Baldwin Hills is the Village Green, an historic Mid-century development that have been converted in to condominiums attracting a mix of young families, seniors and professionals.
Venice
Owning its namesake to the medieval North Italian seaport, at the beginning of the 20th century Abbott Kinney was inspired to imitate and develop a seaside resort with miles of canals, piazzas and a block-long street of attractions under the arched Venetian arcade store fronts.
After the city of Los Angeles annexed Venice it then turned its back on it as a failed land speculation where it gained the label of the “slum by the sea.” The neglect didn’t dimmish its attraction. Starting in the late 1940s Ray & Charles Eames produced mid-century designs in the Bay Cities Garage on Abbott Kenney Blvd. Cheap rents and living by the beach attracted Beat writers and poets and eventually artists followed in the 1960s seeking. “I always lived here, by the sea. I was a beach brat. I was born with salt in my eyes. … I’ve got waves inside. The ocean runs through me, man.” Kate Braverman’s novel, Lithium for Medea was set in the 1970s among the decaying beach houses along the canals of Venice.
Like all neighborhoods, Venice reveals the past and present in its architecture, but unlike most those styles seem to collide with each other. Beach bungalows line pedestrian-only streets in
the shadow of the few remaining ornate Italian Renaissance buildings along Windward Ave. The popularly known “Giant Binocular” building on Main Street by starchitect Frank Gehry, works by Eric Owens Moss and the firm, Morphosis stand among the neighborhood’s more modest wood clad homes.
Much like the rest of Venice its Boardwalk has undergone much change since Abbott Kinney’s opening. This iconic beachfront promenade has street vendors and performers, skateboarders, basketball games, Muscle Beach, a bike and skater path, restaurants and shops that draws tens of thousands.
Westwood
The westside community of Westwood is centered around the sprawling campus UCLA while its commercial and shopping district, Westwood Village primarily caters to college students. Westwood Village is home to both the Hammer Museum (founded in 1990 by businessman and philanthropist Armand Hammer), the Geffen Theater (named after record mogul David Geffen), and the landmark Art Deco Fox Theater which often lends itself to red-carpeted movie premieres.
To the southeast of the campus beyond Fraternity and Sorority Row are elegant, traditional homes. To the north is Holmby Hills developed in the 1920s and is part of Bel Air which along with Beverly Hills form the “Platinum Triangle” of exclusive neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The Playboy mansion is one of its landmarks.
City of Los Angeles Demographics
Based on the 2010 U.S. Census, Los Angeles with nearly four million people is the second largest city in the United States. The city covers 469 square miles spanning from the Santa Monica Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the most populous county in the country. Outside of a few centers, the Los Angeles skyline is markedly low-rise with a few areas such as Downtown, Century City, Hollywood, Westwood and Koreatown. The meridian income is almost $50,000.
Los Angeles Area Schools
Among the many factors in considering where to live, the proximity to quality school is vitally important. It’s not only important information for parents of school aged children, but for any informed buyer or seller who knows school location’s impact on property value and re-sale.
The school finder link provided is intended as a first step. Before purchasing or renting, parents of school aged children need to contact the district’s school for availability and registration requirements. When considering private schools, in addition to availability and registration requirements, commute times and transportation should be considered.
Public Schools
The Los Angeles Unified School District Resident School Identifier is a helpful tool to locate schools in your dream neighborhood. This website matches address within the school district to the corresponding elementary, middle and high schools.
Private Schools
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